Actions speak louder than Ed Miliband's empty words

Monday 7 November 2011 12:00 BST

The warning lights on the dashboard are flashing," Labour leader Ed Miliband warned us yesterday.

"Only the most reckless will ignore or, still worse, dismiss the danger signals." These are words, undoubtedly, to ponder on. What are these flashing lights trying to tell us? Are we about to run out of petrol? Is our engine on fire? Or is it that persistent fault with our anti-lock brakes? No, silly. Look in the manual. These are the warning lights that go off when you've developed "a system of irresponsible, predatory capitalism". You know: the orange ones next door to the trip meter.

And if we ignore them or, worse, dismiss them ... what's going to happen? (Not that there's a meaningful distinction between ignoring and dismissing a warning light, as I suppose Miliband would know if he'd ever driven my car.) What are they warning of, these lights, exactly?

A financial crash? A bit late for warning lights on that. Here, one pictures the Labour leader, even as he is cut from the wreckage by the Jaws of Life, gesturing towards what remains of his dashboard and mumbling to the paramedics: "Look out ... warning lights ..."

The financial crash happened. Even that did not change the fact that, in Miliband's words, "many of those who earn the most, exercise great power, enjoy enormous privilege - in the City and elsewhere - do so with values that are out of kilter with almost everyone else". No newsflash from the Miliband dashboard there either: that is a situation that has tended to obtain at every point in human history.

Miliband's problem is that his warning lights aren't actually warning of anything at all. If we dismiss or ignore them, things will go merrily along in their inequitable way. That's capitalism. The people in their tents outside St Paul's do express dissatisfaction with the order of things. But you'd need to have your head read if you thought they were the start of a revolutionary uprising.

Miliband says we need a solution that goes "beyond politics", and offers sonorous absurdities about "the deeper issues raised by the current crisis" being "too important to be left shivering on the steps of St Paul's". But if we want a financial transaction tax and aggressive action on tax avoidance, for instance - and I think we do - then that is precisely a matter for politics.

Reports indicate that - and delicate readers may wish to look away now - cathedral staff have been finding "human waste" on the carpets of their entranceways. Nobody knows whose: it could be the leavings of protesters, "hangers-on", agents provocateurs or Anglican archbishops. But it honks, and it needs clearing up. Now that's what I call a metaphor.

* I wonder if I'm the only one who finds that these days, the bigger and more important the news is, the less we are able to understand it at the most rudimentary level. If Greece leaves the euro, for instance: is that good for Greece and bad for the rest of the eurozone; good for the rest of the eurozone and bad for Greece; bad for everyone; or good for everyone? I'd like to think the latter, but - judging by the faces that you catch economists making when they think nobody's watching -I have to suspect the second to last.

Liz Taylor's life less ordinary

When Carrie Fisher was just two years old, Elizabeth Taylor ran off with her dad. In a new memoir, Fisher describes how - years later -she came face to face with Taylor when she was invited to a 1998 Easter party at her then stepmother's house. There was tension: Fisher accused Taylor of having been insulting about her mother at a recent dinner party. Taylor denied it.

Then, according to Fisher: "Elizabeth rose, her head held high. 'I'm going to push you in the pool,' she informed me. Not in a threatening way but more as if telling me about the afternoon's events." She did, too. They were firm friends from there on. I find myself surprised by the thought that had Liz Taylor had her own reality TV show, it would actually have been worth watching.

Tom's meddled too far now...

Good old Tom Watson! First this credit to the office of parliamentarian led the charge on the phone-hacking scandal - thus helping dismantle a media-industrial complex that has had British politics in an armlock for three decades, and giving us all much innocent fun along the way. Now, thanks to his Freedom of Information request, we're all going to find out what work David and Samantha Cameron have had done to the bathroom of their Downing Street flat. Carpet or tiles? Do they have a bidet? Is it avocado? Does he have one of those fancy shower-heads like a dustbin lid, or is it one of those rubber stethoscope jobs you wiggle onto the taps? Oh, what bliss. Watson is a genius. I'd just urge him to be very careful when crossing the road from now on.